Dolores Michaels. (Wikipedia)
Dolores Michaels was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to Raymond Roscoe Michaels and his wife Esther Marie Holcomb.). Her father had been a professional baseball player who was acatcher in the Chicago Cubs.He then became a food broker.
She began studying ballet at age five, and went to New York City to study dance and drama before she graduated from Bishop Hogan High School . Her older sister, Gloria Michaels, had gone to New York City and joined the traveling cast of Brigadoon. When the musical came to Kansas City, 16-year old Dolores was inited to join them.
Michaels moved to Laguna Beach, California after she married interior decorator Maurice Martiné in 1953. They separated in 1958.
Michaels was discovered when she was doing a scene in an acting class at 20th Century-Fox‘s talent school. A group of producers and directors were in the audience, and after the scenes were finished, the audience voted on who gave the best performance. She won and got a contract with 20th Century-Fox.
Joanne Woodward was supposed to have the part of “Mildred Pritchard” in The Wayward Bus (1957), but Woodward dropped out to star in The Three Faces of Eve, and the part went to Michaels at the last minute, her first acting role. United Press International said in a review of the film that Michaels’ “torrid” scene, a seduction scene in a hayloft where she makes a pass at the bus driver (Rick Jason), “manages to steal the sexiest scene in the picture,” over better known sirens as Jayne Mansfield and Joan Collins. And also said that Hollywood had not had a scene like this since Jane Russell in The Outlaw. Director Victor Vicas shot the scene twice, an “A” scene and a “B” scene because of the censors.
Michaels wanted to be taken seriously as an actress and not be treated as a sex symbol. When one reporter asked her for her measurements, she responded, “You can go to the wardrobe department and find out.” She also said that she had never been asked to go to the studio photo gallery, stating, “That’s part of the old Hollywood glamor nonsense. Also, it’s in bad taste. I’m not a sexpot, I’m an actress”. Later she told Hollywood columnist Erskine Johnson: “I favor the truly sensual photograph over the coyly teasing garter shots. I’d even rather be posed artistically nude than photographed giggling from behind a Venetian blind. I have never objected to posing. It’s just that I wanted to build a career as an actress first”.
Michaels’ acting career lasted ten years from 1953-1963. Among her final appearances was the role of murderer Jo Sands in the 1962 Perry Mason episode, “The Case of the Playboy Pugilist.” She made her final appearance the following year on an episode of The Lloyd Bridges Show.
After John Duke, she started dating Argentine actor Alejandro Rey, whom she met on the set of Battle at Bloody Beach. She then started dating Novelist-screenwriter Bernard Wolfe (1915-1985), who proposed to her in 1962, but she sent the engagement ring back to him with a note that read, “I don’t wanna”.
Michaels and Wolfe married in Los Angeles on June 1, 1964. The marriage was her second and his first. He was 48 and she was 31. The couple divorced in October 1969.
She and Wolfe had twin daughters, Jordan M. and Miranda I., born in Los Angeles on July 23, 1970.
Dolores Michaels Wolfe died at the age of 68 in West Hollywood, California, of natural causes on September 25, 2001.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Comment om TCM:
I turned on the tv this morning and Battle at Bloody Beach was on. I started to change the channel, but the name Audie Murphy in the info made me pause and then when I saw Dolores Michaels I got a little more hooked. Something about her look really caught my attention. The name Dolores Michales made me think of the movie “Where the Boys Are”. To me she looked like an older, more world weary Merritt(Dolores Hart). Ms.Michaels character was strong, but she had just realized how strong she was when her husband was reported dead. I believe it was two years later when he showed up very much alive. Her struggle to still be a strong woman and fight for what she belived in and still be his wife was more then she thought she could handle during this time of war. Their fight with others just to survive is the most imortant thing they had to worry about. I really enjoyed this movie and look foward to seeing her in other movies.